Whether You Like It or Not — You Will Pay
In Time, Money, or Suffering
I previously promised I’d return to the topic of CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) in the $50M+ asset‑sales segment. But to articulate the central idea hiding behind a perfectly familiar economic term, I needed more time than I expected.
I’m not going to repeat the basic definition of CAC from my earlier piece. What matters here is something deeper: the pricing mechanics of the selling process itself, and how those mechanics map directly to the value (and price) of our service.
Ultra‑expensive assets seduce people because they offer direct contact with a world available to very few. Seven‑ and nine‑figure tickets—homes, yachts, private aircraft, collectible assets—promise enormous commissions and what looks like a shortcut into a different life: close one $100M deal and you’re “in.”
In reality, only a small minority ever pull it off consistently. And the reason isn’t “the market is hard” (that’s a cliché). The reason is simpler—and sharper: every transaction at this level is paid for in three currencies, and you can’t walk away from the register:
Time
Money
Suffering
Time and money don’t need explanation. “Suffering” does.
Suffering Is Not Poetry. It’s a Production Input.
I’m not talking about biblical torment. In this context, “suffering” is the sum of the actions you must take to get the outcome—but don’t want to take.
It’s the internal cost of discipline: cold outreach, humiliating rejections, endless follow‑ups, non‑answers that last for weeks, intellectual overload, and the constant feeling of: “I’m doing everything right—and I’m still being ignored.”
A key point: I separate time, money, and suffering even though, for many people, spending time and money already feels like suffering. I separate them because time and money are easily measured, while suffering is the part of the cost that almost nobody puts on the balance sheet—yet it’s the part that most often breaks a seller’s career.
If you don’t account for suffering, you’re calculating CAC the way amateurs calculate “profit” while ignoring payroll.
The Normal Deal Timeline and the Real Constraint: Not Assets, Buyers
To sell a $50M–$100M asset, the median timeline is 12–18 months. I’m intentionally skipping the extreme anecdotes—“sold in two weeks” and “dragged for five years.” Markets self-correct. Everything has reasons. If you regularly land in the 12–18 month window, you’re probably doing it right.
But there’s a number that defines this entire world:
At any given moment, there are no more than ~100 truly real, truly active buyers in a given segment and time window—people who are both capable and actually ready. And over the next 12–18 months, most of them will either buy or they’re already allocated into a process through trusted channels.
That’s the real scarcity. Not inventory. Not “marketing.” Not your beautifully designed website.
Scarcity is access to a small set of people who can buy—and will buy—on a real timeline.
The Triangle: Time, Money, Suffering—and How They Substitute for Each Other
You can reduce time costs only two ways:
spend more money, or
increase suffering.
These three currencies form a closed triangle: relieve one corner, and pressure loads onto the other two.
And here’s the strange part: suffering is almost always erased from the calculation. Almost nobody runs an honest mental audit of a $50M+ sale. People see the financial line items and feel “in control”: spent X on marketing, got leads, therefore it’s manageable. But in the ultra‑luxury segment, suffering isn’t an emotion. It’s a production resource. You can optimize it, distribute it, reduce it—yet you cannot eliminate it.
In my earlier piece, we accounted for the financial costs (direct cash spend plus the monetized value of time). In this one, I’m adding the third cost—the cost of suffering—so you can see CAC as a complete system instead of a comforting illusion.
Hunters vs. Prey: Competition Among the “Real” Players
Let’s look at a rough macro picture: “active inventory” and the number of professional sellers. I’m not counting the people who “hunt for luck,” call themselves elite brokers, and have zero exclusive rights to sell a $50M–$100M+ asset.
Here’s an illustrative snapshot:
| Industry Sector | "Active" Asset Inventory (Public + Shadow) | Total "Elite" Selling Entities (Teams/Agencies) | Approx. People "On the Hunt" (Agents, Brokers, Biz Dev) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real Estate ($50M+) | 2,500 – 3,500 properties | ~1,200 Global Teams | 5,000 – 7,000 |
| Private Jets ($50M+) | ~400 – 600 (New + Pre-owned) | ~150 Brokerages/OEM Depts | 800 – 1,200 |
| Superyachts ($100M+) | ~150 – 200 (Brokerage + Build Slots) | ~80 Specialist Firms | 500 – 700 |
| TOTAL MARKET CORE | ~3,000 – 4,300 | ~1,430+ | 6,300 – 8,900 |
Even among serious players, competition is brutal. Yes, UHNW individuals can own several assets. But it’s rare that they actively consider multiple equivalent assets in the same class at the same time. Which means a simple truth:
Someone wins. Someone doesn’t. And one person’s win is usually another person’s failure.
The Fiction: “If Everyone Had Access, the Market Would Become Efficient”
There’s a factor many people don’t understand—or pretend not to. The market as a whole nearly covers all living buyers. But each individual player does not.
If every broker had a complete, current buyer universe, the market would become brutally efficient:
buyers would see the full offer set,
sellers would understand true prospects,
and the winner would usually be the first one with the best structure, price, and terms.
Imagine you had a live database of everyone capable of buying a $50M–$100M+ home, jet, or yacht. The moment you receive the mandate, you broadcast it to the entire relevant universe within X days. Relationships, trust, and execution still matter—but the baseline truth is: the market is informed.
In that world, the “peace-of-mind premium” (the commission for a broker’s brand name) becomes much harder to justify. Because when the buyer has the full menu, they ask uncomfortable questions. Not everyone will overpay “for the air of relationships” if there isn’t a real difference in outcome.
Loyalty exists. But it’s not a lifetime annuity. It must be re‑earned, not harvested as a permanent rent for “access to the body.”
The Reality: Almost Nobody Has Full Coverage, and the Market Always Charges for That Weakness
Even the biggest players don’t have full coverage. Whatever they claim—“we have the largest database,” “we know everyone”—almost nobody can honestly say they have a fully refreshed, always-usable buyer universe at an individual level.
Then the law kicks in: The smaller your real coverage, the higher your costs in time, money, and suffering.
And here is where the market becomes truly strange.
The Strange Behavior: Instead of Building Access, Everyone Buys a Vitrine and Calls It a Strategy
Instead of investing in building personal access (a real buyer universe plus reliable channels), many players invest in “activating the listing” and buying public visibility: platforms, listings, PR, “we’re in the right places,” “they will see us.”
The logic is obvious: finding and verifying these people is hard, and placing the asset in a global shop window is easier.
I’ll underline it: Easier is not the same as more effective.
Most sellers want to reduce suffering. But when you reduce suffering, you inevitably increase the load on the other two currencies: time and money. So everyone competes on the same online and offline shelves for the same buyer, waiting for the magic moment when the buyer, or the buyer’s circle, reaches out.
Meanwhile, the business lives on the past: old clients, old relationships, old cycles. If you have ten clients across a 1–10 year ownership cycle, you can survive on loyalty for a while. Manufacturers have a different advantage, but backlogs and waitlists create their own trap: the buyer who won’t wait will leave.
The Big Players’ Trap: “We Can Do Everything”—and That’s How They Lose the Next Deal
The most interesting moment arrives when large incumbents—the people with “a billion in sales”—fall into the trap of their own superiority. They often react to offers like ours with polite condescension:
“We can do everything ourselves. We have everything. We know how.”
Then a simple question cuts through the fog:
Why do you have “only 10 clients” if there are ~100 real buyers in the market at any given moment?
The answers are predictable:
“We’re only 10–15 years in, it’s ahead of us.” Fine. That confirms the 12–18 month reality and the narrow buyer window.
“We only work with the chosen few.” Sometimes true, often a rationalization.
“It’s about relationships.” Yes—and relationships reset.
Here’s the uncomfortable reality: your current client count is not a mystery—it’s the output of your present reach and capacity. And you want more....Whether you admit it or not, you want it—plainly and unequivocally—even if your words claim the opposite.
Here’s the real mechanism: At the end of an ownership cycle, the client often becomes both a seller and a buyer. But don’t assume your past relationship is unbreakable. Every cycle gives the buyer permission to rebuild the circle of trust. If the previous experience was imperfect, they look for a new shoulder.
The Real Price of “Interception”: Your Client Is the One Who Will Never Return
If we’re honest, CAC at this level is often the cost of intercepting someone else’s client.
Inside those ~100 active buyers, there are always people who:
are dissatisfied with their previous experience,
changed key people,
changed priorities,
had an internal conflict,
lost faith in “their person.”
They will not return. That is your client.
But interception works only if you have meaningful coverage. Without coverage, you simply won’t meet them at the right moment. To hit these 100 you have to reach all who can afford it.
The Long Game: Nurturing the “Immature” Billionaire
This is the abscess most brokers refuse to lance. They only hunt for ripe fruit—the buyer who wants to buy today.
But there is a surging class of what I call Immature Billionaires, especially in technology. These individuals may already possess serious capital, but they haven’t yet matured into the lifestyle and identity of $50M–$100M assets. They’re still in the build phase of their lives: scaling, competing, expanding, reinvesting, staying light.
If you wait until they are “ready” to buy a $100M+ superyacht or a $80M aircraft, you have already lost the deal. Real success requires farming these individuals 5–15 years before they enter the market.
You start early. You become a familiar, credible presence in their periphery. You position the asset not as “a purchase,” but as the ultimate milestone, the symbolic flag planted at the summit of their journey.
While your competitors fight over the ~100 people who are ready now, you build the on‑ramp for the next 100. This is not “brand building.” This is pre‑CAC engineering: you are reducing future acquisition costs by converting unknown future buyers into warm future relationships—before the buying window opens.
What We Actually Offer: Not “A Database,” but a Redistribution of the Unavoidable Costs
To win in this market, you must be willing to pay all three currencies: time, money, suffering. You cannot avoid CAC. But you can pay it smarter—by distributing the load strategically.
We don’t just sell “bulk UHNWI outreach,” and we don’t sell “UHNWI marketing.” We sell an access infrastructure that lowers total CAC by:
expanding coverage,
accelerating contact with the right people,
reducing repetitive manual hell (suffering),
and, critically, running a systemized game of anticipation instead of waiting for a call.
The cost of a 36‑month exclusive contract is: €90,000 per year, or €270,000 for 36 months.
Over 36 months, it’s extremely difficult not to close at least one $50M–$100M+ transaction—assuming three non‑negotiables:
you have the right to sell (mandates/exclusivity),
you have real inventory,
you have real closing experience.
If you have neither mandates nor experience, you’re not “in the market.” You’re a dreamer.
Why Research Is Expensive—and Why the “Last Frontier” Is the Most Expensive
You already know this: real research is expensive.
In our current configuration, we’ve covered nearly all transparent markets. What remains are the hardest territories—where it’s difficult to identify the right individuals, verify structures, uncover direct contact pathways, and keep data current.
This is the last frontier separating strong coverage from near-total coverage in the $50M–$100M+ world.
Every new long‑term collaboration funds reinvestment into wealth intelligence, which expands coverage further. This isn’t “spend.” It’s infrastructure capitalization. By purchasing our service, you’re investing in the platform—your return is expanded coverage, which increases your chances of success.
The Only Advice That Matters If You Actually Want to Win
If you truly want growth—not squeezing the last drops out of old relationships—stop investing in the vitrine and start investing in access. Not in “a place on the shelf.” Not in “they’ll find us when they’re interested.” Not in religious faith in branding.
Invest in becoming one of the first calls when an ownership cycle ends.
This is an anticipation game. While others wait and buy visibility, you prepare the person early—calmly, professionally, at the right tempo, without hysteria and without spam. Then, when the window finally opens, you’re not “a random broker from a platform.” You’re the known name, the established channel, the credible operator.
The Real Formula
The real cost of acquiring a client is:
(time + money + suffering) − the price your competitors pay for ignoring our approach ≈ €90,000/year or €270,000/36 months
And this is only the beginning: with each year, the number of transactions per period rises, and the cost per transaction (time, suffering, money) falls, because an exclusive contract doesn’t just buy access—it locks in a compounding advantage. It also fixes the price. If you sign today, the price remains the same in ten years, while the market, prices, and competitive pressure won’t.
What you gain through partnering with us becomes a structural advantage in your segment.
Don’t believe it? Ask those who’ve worked with us for more than ten years.
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